• Registered: 2008-01-15
  • Posts: 7

Topic: Digiface ASIO driver issue with Cubase

Hi,

My hard drive crashed and I had to reinstall Windows 7.

I have a Digiface and I have it connected to a Yamaha 01V with an ADAT connection.

I install the latest drivers for Digiface, well, at least newer than the stuff that I was running before.

Hammer DSP Settings 4.26
This one looks similar to the ones I used in the past.

RME totalMix FX 1.50
This one looks way better and nicer than the ones in the past.


Anyway. if I play I can see in the totalMix stuff everything alright. Levels moving up/down in my 8 channels as expected. Plus the output also alright.


Now, I'm using Cubase Studio 5.5 and, for some reason I'm having troubles to configure this properly.

If I set the DirectX ASIO driver, which huge latency, I have NO problem to record in any of the 8 channels. All works fine (but with the huge latency)

If I set the ASIO Hammefall DSP, with a nice low latency, then I get only ADAT1 and ADAT2 channels Active. All the rest are Inactive. But I can't record in any channel. Cubase just gets silence.

All this worked in the past but, somewhat, I can't figure out how to set up those channels again with the good RME ASIO driver....  any clue of what am I missing?

Thanks,

Regards,
Hipo

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2019-02-02 10:17:16)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Online
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 13,188

Re: Digiface ASIO driver issue with Cubase

Do you talk about this old Digiface ?
http://www.rme-audio.de/products/digiface.php

This is the old "Hammerfall" Digiface series and I assume that you picked the wrong driver.

On the driver download page open the section on the bottom:
"Archiv: Die vorherige Treiber-Generation"
"Archive: Former driver platform"

There you find
"WDM streaming driver for the whole Hammerfall DSP System. WDM, WDM-KS, GSIF and ASIO for all HDSP and HDSPe cards."
Version 3.085, 05/09/2011
hdsp_wdm_3085.zip

Then some recommendations:

Create a folder to backup
- your driver installation files, one folder for each hardware that you own
- your software installation files

This way you can
- keep known to work versions, esp newer versions of PC HW drivers sometimes do not work satisfactory, then you are safer if you stored a version from which you know that it worked good
- keep also older versions
- save the download times in case of bigger software
- are completely independend from the availability of the internet / webserver of the vendor

And then most important ... implement a clever working and tested backup / restore strategy !!!
In the case of a complete loss of OS drive with all applications I could order any SSD which fits in size
and restore my ~540GB data in under 1h completely from an internal backup disk.
If there is no hw outage then even in less than 10 minutes as my backup programm has a mechanism
to restore only changed blocks on disk. This also reduces the "wear" of SSDs when restoring data.

My backup methodology - reliable, fast and cost efficient backup / recovery:

1. split your installation/data into 2 parts: a dedicated disk for operating system (best SSD) and user data.
This way
- your backup and restore time decrease because of less data on the OS disk
- a restore of your OS does not cause loss of user data (*)
- if a disk dies, then only 50% are impacted, either OS disk or user data
- reduces the risk of failing Microsoft upgrade strategies, maybe you heard the case where user lost their complere data on the last Win10 upgrade, only people who had their user data on at least a separate partition or better disk had no issues.
(*) Comment: only profile data would be overwritten to the time of the backup that you restore
So it's worth to save i.e. Firefox Bookmarks to a file on Data Disk and restore them after OS restore as additional step.

2 Split the backup into 2 separate parts for OS and user data:

2a. Get Macrium Reflect to perform backup in form of "disk images" to backup the image your OS disk to a backup disk

2b. Get FreeFileSync to make backup in form of "mirroring" your data in it's native format to a backup disk
I have two mirrors running to two different folders, one daily and another to store an older state like a week or month ago.
Backup in native format has the advantage that your user data is always accessible without being dependend from a backup solution.
Shall the worst case happen, that your backup program can not restore backup images anymore for whatever reason,
then your last measure of resort can still be a new OS installation, but you have your user data in save harbor
Backup of user data needs to include:
- the profile data of all system users below c:\users
- all of your user data which is on another disk (ideally) or at least on a separate partition

3- Automation
- Macrium Reflect automatically runs every day
- FreeFileSync Jobs you need to automate yourself with Windows Task Scheduling

4- Backup Disks (cheapest and fastest solution to avoid costy NAS system):
I strongly suggest to get 2 solutions as backup targets
a) an internal harddisk with 7200 U/min which is still silent
It needs to have enough capacity to hold the compressed Disk images of Macrium Reflect and the mirrored user data of freefilesync (user data and profile data).
I use a special Seagate Enterprise disk which has enterprise features like powering off (and causing no noise)
when it is not being used. As I use it only for backup, its as silent as an SSD wink
Backup over an internal SATA Bus is very fast and reliable and backups can be fully automated.
And external USB disk can cause some noise, is usually not so fast and big capacity disks could more easily get heat problems.
b) external USB disk
Use components that support USB 3.1 gen2 and UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol)
This ensures performant data transfers even if you have many small files, very performant !
This reduces the time required for backup and restore of user data in native format
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/sta … 03149.html
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/sta … 29902.html

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

3 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,596

Re: Digiface ASIO driver issue with Cubase

The current driver 4.26 should work with the HDSPe Digiface under Windows 7. Installing the old driver is not recommended and will add the old TotalMix to the system.

You could also check the firmware version of your HDSPe card, current version is 20.

Inputs and outputs in Cubase might need a 'Reset' (same panel) in Cubase to show all I/Os. Screenshots of Settings dialog and TotalMix might help to find the cause of the issues.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2008-01-15
  • Posts: 7

Re: Digiface ASIO driver issue with Cubase

Hi,

Thank you both for the replies!

Ramses, great stuff about system backups and all. Very good ideas.

And yes, as MC said, the driver works perfectly.

I found my problem, and, it was just a Cubase issue. I always forget that apart of the Device Setup window where you set the Driver (you select RME Hammerfall DSP .....) and you can set some settings, there is the other window called VST Connections where you actually set the mapping between the physical inputs/outputs with the logical ones. Once you set up there your 8 ADAT I/Os, everything is working perfect. For some reason, I keep forgetting about that one... perhaps because once they are set, I don't touch that window in 5 years until the computer breaks.

MC, you have to do worse products, or you will have people like me still using gear of 2001 for years to come!!!! big_smile

Thanks,

Regards,
Hipo